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Saturday, June 21, 2014

Impressions #7: Vagrant Story

Since
nothing of note has come out this week, I decided to look over my
backlog for something to do in my spare time. Turning on my
PlayStation 3, I remembered that I still had Vagrant Story installed
and ready to play. Having never finished my original playthrough of
the game, I figured I would give it a second chance to win me over.
Although it took a New Game Plus save stolen from GameFAQs, I have
finally finished. Combining the experiences of both playthroughs
leaves me with a very mixed opinion on what many people consider to
be a classic game from the era of the original PlayStation.

Let us
begin by discussing the plot of Vagrant Story. The game takes place
in Ivalice, which is coincidentally the setting for Final Fantasy XII
and Final Fantasy Tactics (although the events of Vagrant Story
happen way after those games). Our protagonist is Ashley Riot, an
agent working for the Knights of the Peace and candidate for the
silliest hair in video game history. Agent Riot is accused of
murdering a duke. In order to find out if he really did it, players
go through the week of Ashley's life leading up to the murder. During
this mysterious week, he was hunting down the leader of a mysterious
cult named Mullenkamp. This search leads him to follow their leader
and candidate for the silliest outfit in video game history, Sydney
Losstarot, to the abandoned, cursed city of Lea Monde, where dark
magic runs free. At the same time, knights of the church, lead by a
man named Romeo Guilderstern, are also pursuing Sydney and Lea Monde
for their own ends.

This set
up does its job of bringing the primary cast of Ashley, Sydney, and
Guilderstern together in Lea Monde, and with a supporting cast that
is just large enough to support them without getting distracting.
Unlike most video game stories at the time, Vagrant Story's plot was
highly political in nature. Rather than discussing personal problems,
most the dialog concerns the opposing ideologies of the three
characters and the factions they represent. The one exception is
Ashley, who mostly serves as a viewpoint character. Fitting this
role, his job is mainly to ask questions and consider the answers he
gets to those questions. With a rich and interesting lore backing it
up, the story is one of the greater tales of the PS1 era.

The
gameplay is a bit more hit-or-miss. Revolutionary for its time,
Vagrant Story introduced concepts that were relatively new back in
the early 2000s. As an action-RPG, players moved about the world
freely, with jumping, climbing, and most basic movement mechanics in
place. Instead of going to an abstract “fight zone” to do battle,
players would fight enemies in the same field they would explore in.
When players encounter an enemy, they can press a button to draw
their weapon. Once the weapon is out, pressing that same button again
pauses the action to reveal a wire-frame sphere surrounding Ashley,
indicating his weapon's range. If an enemy is in range, they are
vulnerable to attack. The most unique feature is that player's could
target specific body parts, such as the arms or legs. Damaging any
limb enough will break it and impact the enemy's capabilities. Since
the enemies could also do this to Ashley, a lot of depth was added to
the game.

Further,
the game also had an interesting timing mechanic. When Ashley lands a
blow, he can use a chain technique by pressing that technique's
preset button with the correct, and precise timing. These moves can
also be further chained into with a different technique, meaning that
a combo could go on indefinitely. This is balanced by a stat called
Risk. Whenever Ashley performs an attack, his Risk rises. A higher
Risk results in a higher critical chance per attack, but lower odds
of landing a hit. Therefore, a long combo chain will frequently
result in constantly missing attacks. Since Risk lowers gradually
over time, players have to decide whether or not they want to go for
high hit chains or to take things more slowly. It is a fairly
interesting system that no game before or since really attempted, to
my knowledge. It merged real-time and turn-based mechanics and forced
players to think about their tactics and strategies more than most
other games did.

Next,
let us discuss another unique element of Vagrant Story. This game is
unique in that beating boss battles is one of the only ways to boost
Ashley's stats. The game has no system for experience points and
leveling up. Instead, when a boss is defeated, a slot reel pops up on
screen. When the player stops the reel, the stat boost it lands on is
applied to Ashley for the rest of the game. Aside from that, there
are also elixir items that apply these permanent stat boosts in a
similar way. These are the only two methods the player has to advance
Ashley skills. Though I appreciate the experimental nature of the
system, it honestly did not work for me. I often found myself
underdeveloped thanks to a series of unlucky spins at the wheel on my
first playthrough, among other things.

Lastly,
the game featured a semi-Metroidvannia style of exploration in the
game world. Some doors were locked with magic sigils or keys. In
order to progress, players needed to look for these items in order to
break the seals on the doors. More often than not, players would find
these items behind either a block puzzle or a boss fight, possibly
both. At first, the game's level design is pretty straightforward.
Towards the end, it often becomes hard to keep one's bearings while
traveling through the world. I found that I often got lost, not
knowing if the direction I was going was the one the game intended me
to go. The game does provide maps, but they tell players where they
are, and not where they need to go. As an example, in the game's
final dungeon, I had reached the door to the final boss chamber only
to find that it was locked. I had looked for almost twenty minutes
until I looked up what went wrong online. As it turns out, my mistake
was missing a hard-to-find, well concealed lever in one of the
earlier rooms. This switch just happened to open the final door.
Needless to say, I was a little upset.

The
puzzles also had a similar problem for me. Most of the puzzles in the
game are block-based. Being an lifelong gamer, you would expect me to
be pretty good at block puzzles. I expected me to be pretty good at
block puzzles. However, most of the late game puzzles are either too
devious or too tedious for their own good. Again, I found myself
leaning much more towards checking the FAQs to solve the puzzles.
Alternatively, I would just use the jump boost spells to bypass them
altogether. In a game that was breaking the mold in so many ways,
these sections seemed almost like a waste.

Lastly,
the game had a crafting system. As a Knight, Ashley has training in
the maintenance and creation of all kinds of different equipment.
With this knowledge, he can use the various magic gems and
weapon/armor parts players acquire and put them together at
workshops. Each workshop specializes in different material type. A
shop that can work leather items might not be able to do the same
with steel. Weapons and armor can also be taken apart to salvage
their materials. Mastering the nuances of this system is critical to
the success of a playthrough of Vagrant Story. Personally, I do not
understand it enough to go into any further detail, which is
partially why I did not get terribly far into the game on my first
playthrough. Most of my knowledge of this system comes from second
hand sources.

Vagrant
Story is interesting because it was one of the most experimental
games I have ever played. Most of the mechanical concepts, gameplay,
and even the nature of its plot were wholly unique at the time, and
remain so today. Still, that experimentation has its drawbacks. The
game expects a lot of the player, and if they do not learn the
mechanics quickly, they will find themselves struggling throughout
the game. It is designed to cater to the more hardcore gaming crowd:
The kind of gamer that stereotypically loves Dark Souls. Until I
realized this, I honestly did not like the game all that much. Sure,
it was a breath of fresh air, but it was a breath that frequently
resulted in a Game Over. Were it not for the save I took from
GameFAQs, I probably still would not have finished. Considering how
great the story is, that is a bit sad. Still, for all the gripes I
had, I understand why critics adored it. For the $6 asking price on
PSN, I would still say it is worth it to check out, if only as an
examination of game design.